Laser Cooling a Strongly Coupled Plasma
Abstract
Some of the most extreme environments in the universe can be described as strongly coupled plasmas, which are characterized by an average Coulomb (or electrical) interaction energy between neighboring ions and electrons that exceeds the thermal kinetic energy. This is the case in dense laboratory and astrophysical plasmas, such as in inertial-confinementfusion experiments, white dwarf stars, and the interior of Jupiter. Strong interactions limit our ability to model and understand these systems because they violate fundamental assumptions underlying the standard theoretical description of collision rates and transport coefficients in plasmas.Ultracold neutral plasmas (UCNPs) provide a powerful new platform for studying strongly coupled plasma physics. UCNPs have temperatures that are barely one degree above absolute zero, and they are created by photo-ionizing a cloud of laser-cooled atoms. Low temperature corresponds to low kinetic energy, so in UCNPs strong coupling is obtained at relatively low density compared to experiments on dense laboratory plasmas. This slows collision and transport dynamics enough to make them experimentally accessible.A frontier in the field is to push to lower temperatures, at which the deviations from traditional plasma theory become larger. This proposal will develop laser cooling of a neutral plasma in order to push back this frontier. This will represent a new method to control and confine a neutral plasma. It will improve our fundamental understanding of plasma behavior in extreme environments, benchmark computer simulations of these systems and hopefully lay the groundwork for future technological advances.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 28, 2017
- Source ID
- FA95501710391
Entities
People
- Thomas C Killian
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Rice University
- United States Air Force